Above and Below

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

This church is so cool on a hot summer day. I don’t know who is paying the air conditioning bill at this gothic masterpiece at high noon in the middle of August, but I’m glad it’s not me.

I found this dark, vaulted, holy space when I tapped into my app, Church Finder. I had just dropped off all of the paperwork for Chris’s visa to India. Yippee. But now I had to get back to my job uptown. I kind of wished I could revisit that Louise Nevelson chapel from yesterday. It was so lovely, bright and right near the subway. I started walking west.

The nearest church according to the app was St. Thomas Church at 53rd and Fifth. I felt a bit tired. I have been getting up early to blog, Twitter, Facebook, and work on my novel. I’ve been staying up late for the same reasons. But the cold blast of Christianity hit me. I liked the stillness, the darkness, the emptiness, after a bright, crowded afternoon.

The cool air had everyone in this church smiling as they walked in or out. Smiling in church made me think. Before I started grammar school at St. Joan of Arc Catholic School in Skokie, Ill., my family went to church there. I don’t remember ever praying, but I definitely remember being told to stop giggling. I also remember how proud I was when my father was the lay reader. And how surprised the priest was when I asked him in Second Grade, “Why can’t women be priests?” I am still asking that.

A few people were entering the church. I got the vibe that a 12 o’clock service would be starting soon. God knows I didn’t want to get stuck in a service. I knelt quickly in a small altar area.

The grating on the floor rumbled and the bells overhead rang. Wow. I felt the earth move beneath me. And the bell chime over me. Very nice. Very unplanned.

The church itself is grand. But the impression of the air conditioning, the bells, the subway’s rumble; the things that you can feel always trump the things that you can see. Though the altar is a feast for the eyes with lots of life-size sculptures floating up the back wall — Hard to explain and it’s getting late again.

Tomorrow I will be back up in the Adirondacks, thanks to Amtrak, just for a few days, but there’s bound to be a church-a-day there too. Can’t wait to see.

Last week I walked

Published on by mbcoudal1 Comment

When I was with all my siblings and their families for our family week in the Adirondacks, I walked miles every morning with my sister in laws, Heidi and Nicole.  Walking is better than running because you can really talk.

We talked about the contagion theory of exercise. I loved this article from the New York Times magazine a year ago…

Good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people.

So, because I am altruistic (and not at all vain. No, not me), I am walking, running, swimming, doing Yoga and Pilates, for my friends, family, my wider circle. I am not working out for myself. I am doing it for all of you.

Okay, I feel good when I work out too. I’ll admit it — I do it for my own sanity. Last night for some reason, I was in a bit of a funk. I was missing my kids. I wanted to be where they were, but the city is a drag for kids in the summer. After work, I went to the JCC to swim. I told myself, You only have to do eight laps. I have no idea why I always tell myself,  Do eight laps. In any size pool, that’s my goal — eight. It’s manageable. But I did much more than eight. I walked in the pool too, punching the water in front of me, like a crazy aqua aerobics lady. I did 20 sit ups on the side of the pool.

I felt much better.

Exercise is better than anti-depressants. But it takes longer and you have to change clothes when you do it.

The Gospel According to Louise Nevelson

Published on by mbcoudal1 Comment

This chapel is a gem. It is small and all white. It is Louise Nevelson. It is modern. Ah.

I was on my lunch hour, running to midtown to get Chris’s visa to India (where he is going in October for medical healing and treatment). But I was turned away at the 53rd Street visa office because I was missing Chris’s birth certificate. Ugh.

I had planned to run into St. Patrick’s Cathedral for my church-of-the-day visit. After Riverside, that’s the place. But then, it was too far to walk. I had to get back to work. And this — this bright, clean, small worship space tucked into that Citicorp Center (or whatever that complex is called) at 54th! This small, clean, hidden space — so much better than St. Pat’s! Lovely.

I knelt and prayed. For some reason, I remembered a friend of Chris’s, Robert Farber, who died of AIDs. I thought maybe Robert had recommended Chris and I visit this church years ago and listen to someone, a mystic, who channeled the word of God. Chris doesn’t remember a mystic. It was a dim memory of sitting in the big St. Peter’s sanctuary with a hundred people who believed in the mystic, a middle-aged guy, who rambled his dreams. I don’t remember his name. (I am embarrassed to say, it may have been my ex-husband, Jim, not Chris, with whom I visited St. Peter’s to hear the mystic ramble. It’s moot.)

I think I met Chris’s friend, Robert, who was a painter, once in the early 1990s, back when AIDS was a death sentence and not a chronic condition. We visited him in his West Village apartment. He was very weak, wrapped in a blanket in the summer. We went to see his art show in Tribeca. God, I haven’t thought of Robert in years. Visiting churches was making me think too much of death.

I startled. A doorknob rattled in the back of this Louise Nevelson chapel, which I’ve learned is called the Chapel of the Good Shepherd.

A young man, perhaps Latino, sat down. Then, another door opened in the front. There are five walls in this little church, two doors, every which way you looked, there’s Nevelson’s boxy, sculpture. Really cool.


An Anglo priest began setting the altar for mass, laying the cloth, lighting the candles. The young man and I just sat there watching. I felt I should help. The priest left.

“Is there a service here now?” I turned and asked the other parishioner.

“At 12:15,” the young man said.

Wonderful, I thought. Only a few minutes to wait for the word of God. But then the priest came back in. “Are you staying for Mass?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. God must want me to be right here right now I thought. Count me in. I hope it’s relevant. The priest handed me a red prayer book.

“Mass is at 12:30. It used to be 12:15. 12:15 is better and I’d rather it was 12:15. But it’s 12:30.” He shrugged apologetically and left.

So I sat a few more minutes. I pulled out the beige kneeler, it was covered in carpeting. I knelt there.

Then I left. I felt bad leaving when I said I’d stay. But I couldn’t in all clear conscience wait ten whole minutes for the Word. I had to get back to work, for God’s sake.

I felt a twinge of guilt leaving, but overall I felt refreshed. And the refreshed feeling lasted a little while. Thanks to Louise.

“I never feel age….If you have creative work, you don’t have age or time.”

– Nevelson.

She was a genius. This chapel is genius. I highly recommend.

Riverside

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

Riverside Church. This is an easy one. Right next door to where I work. Maybe I should’ve saved my visit to this church for a rainy day. Not a beautiful, blue-sky day. I ran over there at 4:15 the way a smoker busts out of the office for a cigarette. A quick puff of spirituality. 5 minutes away from my desk. I’ll BRB.

Really beautiful church. To get there I had to walk past a film in production using the church as a holding location. I am such a jaded New Yorker — I could care less what they were filming. I just hoped no young NYU film student working as a PA tried to stop me on the sidewalk. That’s right, some of my best friends when I went to NYU were PAs and I never let them stop me. But no one stopped me. Then I felt guilty for expecting trouble. The guys at the door just shrugged me in. No fuss.

This church is a destination church. Tourists snap pictures of the stained glass.

I sat in the middle of the the vast church. I couldn’t help but remember the last time I was in this sanctuary. In probably a similar spot. I don’t really want to remember that day. It was truly awful. The funeral for two of my friends and colleagues, Sam Dixon and Clint Rabb, who died in Haiti. I sat there not wanting to remember. But I remembered Judith Santiago’s beautiful liturgical dance; uplifting, in a time of collective sorrow.

I wanted to ask God, Why? Why do good people suffer? Why do people doing awesome, wonderful, kind things get killed?

It was hard to concentrate on the big questions today. The piano was being tuned. A handful of tourists were taking pics.

The note on the piano kept getting hit over and over. I felt like I was in a Philip Glass concert.

In the late 1990s, I heard Thich Nhat Hanh speak at Riverside Church. God, he was awesome talking about engaged Buddhism. He said we we can meditate on peace, but also take action for peace. He preached forgiveness, as a Vietnamese monk in the United States. Forgiveness was everything.

I remembered hearing the former minister of Riverside William Sloane Coffin speak (on Charlie Rose, I think) after the death of his adult son. How he would honor his son’s death by not letting one sign of Spring escape him. He would mark his son’s death by living. He would celebrate every single bud of Spring on every new tree. I often remember his words in the Springtime.

I walked back out into the blue-sky Summer day. I went back to my desk. And, okay, I went out for happy hour with a couple of work peeps agaain. (Thanks Melissa and Emily!)

Yesterday, the schedule was beer, bra, church. But today it was church, sangria, manicure.

If you are like me, visiting a church a day, visit Riverside Church. (And there’s a chapel there too, so you can go twice.)

image

A beer, a bra, then church

Published on by mbcoudal1 Comment

I’m full of ambition. This morning I resolved to work 10 minutes a day on my novel. (Only one more hour in this day to complete that goal.)

And here’s a new one. Visit a church a day.

I was sitting in Havana Central after work with my work spouse, sipping a beer tonite. I was showing him a new app for my phone, Church Finder. He and I have the same phone. We love our phones. We often talk about our phones when we get together. Fondly, we talk about their newest and best features, like the phones are our darling children. (My real children are still in the country while I am in the city, hence the ability to frequent a bar, a bra shop, a church, guilt-free.)

On Church Finder, you can request the nearest church to your location. So we searched for the nearest United Methodist Church.The address that showed up? 475 Riverside Drive. We laughed. Because, the United Methodist Church at 475 is our beloved place. But it’s not a church. The God Box at 475 is a church headquarters. It never would occur to me to list 475 as a church.

In any case, we two parted. I did a little shopping.

If you must know, I purchased a bra (okay, two!). One of the ladies at the Town Shop bra store once told me, “Honey, I know titties.” Going to a classic bra store is almost a religious experience. The saleswoman joined me in the small pink fitting room to give me just the perfect fit. I was giddy with gratitude, because I’m not easy to fit. But I am way off topic here. My point is —  I went for a beer, for a bra, then I needed something more.

I was right around the corner from All Angels’ Episcopal Church. Chris and I used to go there, in the late 90s when Hayden was a baby and I was pregnant. It was evangelical.

On one of our first visits there, I was so surprised to see that one of the ministers was Doug, an ex-crush, acting student friend of mine from NYU. The other pastor, Rev. Goode was lovely, earnest, English, I recall. Both of them were fabulous pastors — kind and smart. (I can’t really recall why we stopped going. At some point, the church felt too conservative, I think.)

Back to the present, I asked the gentleman at the All Angels’ front desk, “Could I sit in the sanctuary for 5 or 10 minutes?”

He was pleasant, but seemed surprised. He may have been closing up shop. It was around 8:30 ish.

“Well, there’s someone playing piano,” he said, apologetically.

“Great,” I said, enthusiastically.

As soon as I got into the sparse sanctuary, a young man in the black tee shirt stood up from behind the piano.

“I’ll leave you alone,” the young man said.

“No stay. You can play,” I said. I realized I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted him to play.

“No, that’s fine. I’ll come back.” He left.

So I was alone. The life-size wooden angel in the back of the church blows a trumpet. And the quiet was all around me — even though the church is just off Broadway. I sat in a back row. I closed my eyes. I remembered when I went to All Angels’. I remembered going through a very tough time. I felt comforted there. I just let the quiet wash over me. I remembered how one Sunday night when I was attending All Angels’, I went to serve dinner to the homeless. I was very pregnant with the twins, and one of the homeless guys made me sit down and he waited on me. I remember feeling so grateful for that fried chicken dinner with the homeless folks.

I didn’t want to stay too long. I didn’t want to keep the piano player from his music.

Sometimes a church doesn’t feel like it belongs to you. Sometimes a church feel like a place only for goody goodies, the well-dressed, the righteous, the connected, the believers. But I felt good sitting in the sanctuary of All Angels’.

Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the new bra, maybe it was the quiet angel near the door. Maybe it was my own past, that memory of a time I needed help and being back in a place where I found it.

NaNoWriMo Again

Published on by mbcoudal3 Comments

I love writing.

Revising? Editing? Not so much.

I love the act of creating. When I was on my sabbatical, writing a blog post a day, I was in heaven. Always new. Always thinking. Always up for another cup of coffee. Hit the Post button. I’m done. I wrote it. I’m brilliant in the very short form. The long form. Ugh.

Last November, I wrote a novel in a month. NaNoWriMo. Na=National, No=Novel, Wri=Writing, Mo=You get the idea.

I wish that I had as much gusto for editing the book these last 10 months as I had for writing the book in that one month.

So it is with any big achievement.

Everyone’s up for a wedding, but who is up for the day-to-day of marriage? Helping the newlyweds redecorate or navigate their finances? Nah! Everyone loves to celebrate the baby’s birth, but the grueling day in and day out of diaper changing? Not for the faint of heart. No big balloon bouquets for the daily slog. How about graduation? Heck, I’d love to send the graduate a card with a few bucks tucked inside! But help her in the days, weeks, months ahead as she’s looking for a job? Not really feeling it.

I honestly never felt so purposeful as I felt writing my novel last November. Never felt so accomplished as when I finished it. I made myself cry (but if you know me, well, crying’s my forte.)

Loved the challenge of reaching 75K (or was it 50K? How soon I forget) of NaNoWriMo. I loved the support, encouragement of my cyberfriends and my real family.

Charlotte quieted the other two, “Shhhhh, Quit fighting. Mom’s writing.”

Hayden bragged about me at an all school assembly.

Catherine brought me a cup of tea, then backed away like a geisha girl.

But the month was over. Weeks turned into months. It’s almost November — time to start a new novel. How can I start another baby when I haven’t completely finished the last?

I opened the humongous file of the 2009 NaNoWriMo winner, stared at the screen. My fingers lay dormant.

After a while, “What are you doing, Mom?” My head was on the keyboard.

“Thinking about my novel,” I said.

“I thought you wrote that book already, Mom,” Char said.

“I did. But now I have to rewrite it,” I said. Honestly, I have to — not only rewrite and edit it, but I have to start to read it. I can’t even remember my main character’s name. I wrote those 175 pages in November as if in a trance.

Hayden walks by carrying a plate of Bagel Bites. “Your book? Mom, when is your book coming out? I should make an announcement at school again,” Hayden nodded.

“Oh, it’s not done.”

“Really?”

I don’t know. Maybe there’s someone somewhere who actually spews out words and doesn’t have to rewrite them. I wish that was me. But that ain’t me — Gotta rewrite this part! Got to, rather — That isn’t me.

I need to brew and stew and revisit. Ah, maybe that’s how I can get back to the novel. See it as a little visit to a world I once knew and loved and forgot. Like remembering the high of a wedding, a birth or a graduation. Rest on achievement represented by that one big day, but don’t let the one big day stop me from really living the one big life. ‘Cause life is an accumulation of days, some big, some small, mostly average. That’s what writing and editing is – the daily grind, no big who-ha! And I’d rather party, but I’ve got to slog.

I am challenging myself to read my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel and edit and revise for 10 minutes every day until November when I begin a new novel. I will try to periodically check in here and post progress. That seems to have been a successful way to get myself to start running; the semi-public act of blogging about running has made me a more consistent runner. http://runningaground.wordpress.com/

Maybe the semi-public act of writing about novel writing will make me actually work on my novel. If you think this is true, see an earlier blog post where I have considered doing this in April. http://gettingmyessayspublished.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/nanoedmo/ It’s just easier (more fun!) to write than edit.

My Beautiful Bridge

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

I saw a performance piece “Bits and Pieces” at the Elizabethtown History Center museum a week ago. Then I saw the performance again.

The performance really hit me. Even the second time, I wept. Because the piece somehow captured it — the bridge, any bridge, is a metaphor for a woman. She serves, she links, she works, and suddenly, she is no more.

The Champlain Bridge, between Addison, Vermont and Crown Point, NY, the piece reminded me, can still be seen in the movie “What Lies Beneath” with Harrison Ford (who, like me and Hilary, grew up in Park Ridge, Ill).

I was not near Crown Point when the bridge came down in December of 2009. But a friend sent me the link on Facebook. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URYzzGlcSKU&feature=related It so shocked me, caused me to gasp. The destruction of a monolith, like the World Trade Center, is just unthinkable. Transfixiating.

Lindsay Pontius produced the oral history/performance piece along with school kids from Moriah. It gives a voice to the people who made the bridge, used it, watched it implode.

The 80-year old bridge was more than a bridge. But she was not cared for enough.

This year, there is no bridge: businesses suffer; folks reminisce. ‘Bridge Road is the Bridge to Nowhere Road,’ a performer says.

What lies beneath is her legacy. Soon another Mother Bridge will be put in place. We will feel the old bridge’s demise was inevitable. The unbelievable becomes inevitable.

Until the new bridge steps in, New Yorkers board the ferry and cross the narrowest point of Lake Champlain to get to Vermont.

http://www.adkhistorycenter.org/cal/schedule10.html

Crying at the Sky

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

I was in yoga on Saturday morning. Because it was Heritage Day, we could not meet at the Heritage House. So we met on the band shell of Ballard Park. It was a little like being on stage. Well, it was like that because we were on stage.

Almost everything that Michael, the teacher, says during class is brilliant. He said that in a new translation of the Upanishads, published in 2008, a line was written, “Hope is never false.” And he was making a political statement. 2008 was about hope. Hope is never false.

Wow. His July theme for the yoga classes was independence. Because Independence Day can be celebrated for days beyond the 4th of July. It can be any day. It can be every day.

I looked up at the sky from the band shell. I think I was in warrior pose. The white clouds were striated. The blue sky was almost too blue. I started to cry. I have no idea why. The beauty of the sky does that to me sometimes. I cry during church when the choir sings too. I don’t know why. I am an intellectual. There are times when yoga, a cloud or music sneaks past my intellect and makes a direct hit for my heart. Or maybe it’s my soul.

Life is a Sonnet

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

Let’s say each of us lives in a poem. I am living in a sonnet. My inner life is free verse, stream of consciousness. I am unwieldy, feminist, wild. I feel required to be tame, to serve, to rhyme. To tie it up in a cuplet.

I have to — simply must — follow the rules, the conventions, the beats, the script. The kids need to be at school, at the bus stop at a certain time. My husband, too, requires structure, doctors’ appointments, reminders to take his medicine several times a day. My coworkers rely on me to be collegial and productive.

So it’s true, I feel confined within a sonnet’s rigid structure. I long for freedom of expression. Shakespeare created a world that followed, “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?” Ah, genius! To take a world and implode it — and still live within it. To throw rocks at the Catholic Church while standing in the church’s front yard. Harder to take away a piece of the Berlin Wall if you were a world away, watching it all unfold on TV.

Change the sonnet’s structure while living within it.

On one of my earlier blogs, I wrote about how I cried over the story of the confined whale who killed the beautiful, helpful, passionate trainer.  https://mbcoudal.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/passion-leads-to-death/

It broke my heart. But I know why the caged whale kills. I know why the caged bird sings.

Sure, there’s safety in confinement, in living in a sonnet, in coloring inside the lines. Safety is appealing. Birds make their nests in homes that are familiar, made of ordinary twigs. They tidy them up with bits of string. But the whales in captivity are going blind because their eyes are not meant to only look up at their trainers. And their dorsal fins are getting floppy.

Creative birds and whales may find that safety is the enemy of art. The artist must break the mold. The bird wants to fly. The whale wants the expanse of the ocean. The actor considers the exit.

Remember in Sartre’s “Huis Clos” (Yes, I love speaking French!) (“No Exit”) when the door opened, not one of the three who had been confined got up to leave? Given a door creaking open on my stage set life, would I pass beneath the open door? And leave the play?

I might! There are times. Yes, I admit, when I long to stop caring — stop caring for others. Stop caring what others might think if I left the sonnet.

I long to smell the roses. To lie down beneath a rose-colored rose bush on a hot summer afternoon. I want to dig my fingernails into soil and taste the humidity, thick against my lips. To just slow this life down to a crawl and skip the appointments, skip the work-a-day world. Skip this one day, sit it out.

I do know, as I am about to leave through the open door, that wild abandon is not the only venue for creativity to flourish.

Love and meaning, definitely flowers, can bloom when fenced-in. I find freedom when I write. It is my way to buck the system, to explore, to travel to new, untrammeled territory. To let go of poetic convention.

Writing in fragments. Thinking in haiku. Dawdling over a dissertation for no degree. There are ways to live in a sonnet.

To be in any relationship — mother, wife, Christian writer — there are certain expectations. There are certain freedoms you must not entertain. But writing about them, singing about them — within your caged existence, within your “No Exit” stage set? Ah, sure, go ahead! Sing away! The other poets in their cages may sing along too. And then, stop and listen to the song. Get out of your own head and into someone else’s poem.

The act of singing, of writing, of expressing the truth can vault the singer, the poet, farther than their confinement. The songbird is never free. Yet the song may travel far. The tune may be repeated. The song lives. Shakespeare died but Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day? Ah that sonnet lives on.

I’m sure I should end this with a cuplet, but I have none. So I will give you his.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

– William Shakespeare

Zennis

Published on by mbcoudal1 Comment

Dan doesn’t get mad if he misses a shot or double-faults. With the same mess-up, Hayden has thrown his racket and cursed himself. I fall somewhere in between. I like to blurt out, “Bastard,” in a quiet, English accent when I miss a shot. I did note when playing last night that my blurting out, “Bastard!” is ironic, given that I am playing against my own son.

Still, “Bastard!” Hayden really does have a nice little drop shot that he inherited from his dad. And what do I have? I have tenacity. The more I play, the better I get. Dan is really good overall. I think he’s taking a class in Zen Tennis. He has the mind game and the real game down. He’s unflappable, consistent.

There is something totally satisfying about the Thwack of hitting a ball. Something very healing about whacking at a ball flying through space. The sound, the feel, the shudder. I am not great at golf or softball, other thwacking-type sports. I just like being outdoors. And as I’ve mentioned on this blog, I love the bonding of playing sports, doing yoga, or running with friends. Only the camaraderie of Happy Hour comes close.

A few of my work friends and I occasionally find a cheap place for Happy Hour beers on payday. I like that part of work — the socializing part after work. (Okay, I also like the socializing part AT work.) But working out with friends is really, really fun.

You learn a lot about people playing against (or with) them in sports. The biggest surprise? How good the IT people are at tennis — Fred and Cynthia, for example — are really athletic. And you don’t always equate computer nerd with jock.

Becoming a grown-up teaches you that people are not simply the high school labels we might impose upon them. People are complex. It shows through in their game.